Experts and former officials say the White House’s laissez-faire approach to the Justice Department — adopted in part as a response to the politicization there under President George W. Bush — allowed prosecutors’ naturally aggressive tendencies to burst through unchecked.

Now that’s dumped a political and public relations disaster on the Oval Office.

”This White House, out of concern to distance itself from what was seen as excess politicization of DOJ by the Bush administration, had not engaged DOJ at all on leak cases,” said Columbia University law professor David Pozen, who spent several months conducting a major review of the federal government’s love-hate relationship with national security leaks. ”

In previous White Houses, even those railed publicly against leaks, officials sent “cautionary signals to the Justice Department … urging restraint and sensitivity to political, policy and constitutional concerns,” Pozen said. But the administration’s distancing policy, said Pozen, meant that prosecutors were “being given more leash than they had previously to do what they do.”